Episode 12: “Focus, Balance and Get Pushy” with Debbie Miglaw, Head of Product Management for Broadridge Customer Communications

Staying Focused: “For those of us that were around when electronic bill presentment and payment markets started taking off in 2000, everybody was saying, ‘Paper is going away. We better do something about it right now.’ We had hockey-stick charts that indicated print will be gone by 2005. Those five years passed and hockey-stick projections were still around, but they were just pushed out. It’s been a much slower progression when you look at the actuals. We've seen digital adoption for certain companies and markets take off dramatically, like credit cards. When you look at digital adoption across all industries, some statement-based companies are still in the single digits and billing markets may be at 20 percent or, if you’re lucky, 30 percent. At one point, we thought we just needed to wait it out for the younger generation to become the dominant customer segment; then we realized it’s more like the 30- to 50-year-olds who have the money to pay the bills, who have investments, and are willing to adapt to new technology. That’s when we saw that it's not a demographic issue or even a market issue. It's a mixture. That became our challenge: how do our products and services help our customers across that continuum? And that's what we focus on.”

Balancing Today’s Needs with Tomorrow’s Expectations: “When I look back at how things have morphed, we went from ‘print and digital channels’ to ‘customer communications’ and now we're focused on ‘customer experience’. It doesn’t matter if it’s print or digital, it’s about creating the best communication experience. When we are developing solutions, it's a balance of what do our clients need today and what is coming next? We look at everything that is happening in the market – from customer engagement best practices to new technologies, like artificial intelligence and chat. Our customers may question, ‘Broadridge and chat services?’ But, if we're archiving all of their documents and we're presenting them back to their call center or customers, well, why not? We take that combination of current-state activities and how we can actually provide the best services, as well as what's next. We’re very visionary and that’s how we deliver something great for our customers.”

Getting “Pushy”: “When we first launched some of our electronic products way back in the day, we did consumer research and asked how they would like to get these communications. The overall response was, ‘Well, isn't email kind of like an electronic version of paper? Can it be like my mailbox where you send it to me? Inbox, mailbox… Why can't you just push it to me?" As part of that, we delivered a secure email solution back in the early 2000s. This year, we’ll be launching a service where our clients can push a dynamic digital experience to their customers; it’s almost like your customer is on your website, but it’s actually pushed to the customer. It’s a really nice bridge between our clients’ and their customers’ needs.”

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